1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to toy vehicles and more particularly to toy vehicles having a biased action feature responsive to impact.
2. Background Art
There are toy vehicles in the prior art in which a part or all of the body breaks or explodes away from a unitary chassis that carries the surface engaging wheels on spaced apart parallel axles as a result of a crash or impact. Examples of such prior art toy vehicles are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,757,482; 3,176,429; 3,734,500; 3,959,920; and 4,413,443. Other prior art toy vehicles such as those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,597,094 and 1,363,891 have chassis parts that are pivotally connected together along an axis parallel to the surface engaging wheel axles and open up in response to impact. Still other prior art toy vehicles like those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,000,137; 3,445,959; and 4,466,214 plus published British Patent Application GB2,033,766A have spring loaded lever arms that are released in response to impact to engage the surface supporting the vehicle in order to flip or overturn the vehicle. Particularly as such crash responsive toy wheeled vehicles have long been popular toys, there is a continuing demand for more entertaining and exciting devices of this type. It would be particularly desirable to have an impact responsive toy wheeled vehicle that would both break apart and flip over without requiring a separate spring loaded lever arm to flip the vehicle. In addition to providing such an impact responsive toy vehicle with a lock-out to prevent the impact responsive action during normal play it would also be desirable to provide a virtually fail-safe way of putting the parts of the vehicle together with the impact responsive feature rendered totally inoperative.